About backing up Oracle databases

You must run the Backup Exec Agent Utility on the Oracle server and add information about the instances before you can perform any backup or restore operations.

During a backup operation, the amount of data that is backed up may not equal the size of the Oracle files that are on the disk. This behavior is normal. Backup Exec backs up the selected data files as well as a copy of the control file.

In a Central Admin Server feature environment, all backup jobs for a specific Oracle instance must be delegated to the same managed Backup Exec server. If you do not restrict the backup job to the same managed Backup Exec server, then before you can restore data, you must move the physical media that contains the backup sets to a single managed Backup Exec server.

If the Oracle database resides on the volumes that are configured with Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM), you cannot select these volumes as part of a file system backup.

The database must be in a mounted or an open state before you can make backup selections.

The database must be in ARCHIVELOG mode before the Archived Logs node can be displayed under the Oracle resource of the Oracle server.

To perform backup and recovery functions for an Oracle 12c database, the user must have the SYSBACKUP user privileges. For earlier database versions, the privilege and user for RMAN connection is SYSDBA and SYS.

The target for RMAN connection is either a target database (control file) or a recovery catalog. In Oracle 12c, RMAN connects to the container database if a recovery catalog is not configured.

Even if you select a single PDB or an individual tablespace or a data file for backup, the Oracle agent uses the CDB as the RMAN target if a recovery catalog is not configured. If you select multiple PDBs or an entire CDB or archived logs for backup, then the Oracle agent uses the CDB as the target. Thus, the target for RMAN is always the CDB. All the backups and restores happen by connecting to the CDB.

If you select the Oracle Database node for backup, all data files of pluggable databases (including the data files of the root), archived logs, and control file are backed up.

Each pluggable database node lists all the tablespaces of that pluggable database. If a PDB is selected for backup, all the tablespaces and the archived logs are also backed up along with the control file. Archive logs are backed up only if the CDB is running in the Archive log mode.